Our next adventure was to head to the desert. This involved a lot of time in the car, so we started the day with a chilly, misty 2 mile run at AIU before enjoying breakfast with Mary Grace. Then, we attempted to find the monkeys* in the cedar forest near MG's campus, but after a few minutes driving about we had no luck. I think it was too cold and rainy for them. We did get to see the town of Ifrane a bit. A beautiful Swiss looking town right in the mountains. It doesn't look anything like the rest of Morocco!
Then, our drive got started. Much to our surprise, the first stop was a chance to see the eliusve monkeys*! We took a few pics from afar and headed on our way. I'm a bit surprised they have all this tourist type photo ops and peanuts for sale for these guys when they are on the endangered species list, but this seems to be a theme with many Moroccan treasures that we'll discuss later.
After the monkey sighting, we were on our way. A lovely 7ish hour drive today and so many terrain changes. Many portions of the drive reminded Mike of Santa Fe. Lots of mountains and adobe. But, also beautiful oases with palm trees in the middle of the dirt/sand.
We even stopped at Brahim's summer home and had tea with his parents and watched some Moroccan TV.
We arrived at our riad overlooking the Sahara desert sand dunes in time to watch the sunset and watch others head out on their camel rides. I took a quick dip in the beautiful pool and we had a buffet dinner at the riad before heading to bed.
*Monkeys here refer to the Barbary macaques. They are not monkeys at all, but certainly in the primate family.
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